BURLINGTON, Vt. — ECHO Lake Aquarium and
Science Center, at the Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, will be
opening its newest exhibit, RAISE THE ROOF, on Saturday, January
15, 2011.

Though we spend approximately 90% of our lives in buildings, we
don’t think much about the roof over our heads, the floor
beneath our feet, or the doorways we walk through. The design
and engineering of buildings, from city skyscrapers to backyard
dog houses, are all related to each other through fundamental
construction principles.

ECHO’s newest exhibit, Raise the Roof, presents a fun and
fascinating look at buildings and what makes them stand up as
well as what makes them come down. This highly interactive
exhibit, developed by the Science Museum of Minnesota, will be
available to ECHO guests through May 1, 2011.

Visitors will learn how still air insulates and moving air sets
a chill with the Down Draft House. The Demolition
Theater will show how large buildings are demolished without
scratching a window of the buildings nearby. Visitors can create
an earthquake and see how much power is needed to topple a
building on the Earthquake Shake Table. Basic building
principles are introduced through this exhibit as well including
the use of compression and tangents with the Build a Truss
feature.

Perhaps the most dramatic component of the exhibit is the
Dome Structure. With many cranks of the hand, the building
walls slowly come together and voila, a beautiful dome building
is complete! YOU RAISED THE ROOF!

During the three-month stay of this exhibit, the ECHO education
team will be presenting a myriad of activities to complement
RAISE THE ROOF, one such activity is the construction of an
igloo made completely of plastic gallon milk jugs!

Buildings are cultural, practical, and beautiful structures in
our lives. The Raise the Roof exhibit will give visitors a new
appreciation of buildings. They’ll never look at one the same
way again!